Phil & Tye discuss Saban impacting Arkansas, interview Nikki Chavanelle, and Get Off My Lawn!
Bud Light Morning Rush Podcast: Tuesday
John and Tommy discuss sports tech, recap Yurachek’s comments, and more!
Martin, Noland get weekly SEC honors after sweeping Bulldogs
FAYETTEVILLE — Following last week’s sweep of Mississippi State where Arkansas outscored the Bulldogs, 27-10, and now sits atop the SEC West, Casey Martin was named the SEC’s player of the week.
Freshman right-hander Connor Noland also took home the league’s co-freshman of the week honors.
The pair led the Hogs to a 4-0 record for the week and are now 30-10 on the year and 12-6 in league play.
Casey Martin | Player of the Week
Martin hit .471 for the week with five of his eight hits and six of his 10 RBIs coming against the second-ranked Bulldogs.
His performance helped Arkansas to its second SEC series sweep and second sweep over Mississippi State in the last three years.
He also totaled a career-high four RBIs twice, once coming in the 16-4 win over Arkansas-Pine Bluff and the other in a 12-5 series-clinching victory over MSU.
The Lonoke native takes a five-game hitting streak into this week’s midweek series against Northwestern State and he has at least one hit in 15 of his last 17 games with a .391 average over his last 10 games with eight extra-base hits and 11 RBIs.
On Friday, Martin hit his first career grand slam, his eighth home run of the year, to help the Hogs earn an important series victory over the Bulldogs.
He finished the game 2-for-3 and also tied a career-high with three walks.
Martin now has 17 doubles on the year and is tied for the SEC lead in the category with MSU’s Jake Mangum and teammate Dominic Fletcher. He is also fourth in the SEC in total bases (97).
Connor Noland | Co-Freshman of the Week
Noland had his best week as a Razorback, earning his first two wins of the year after throwing two scoreless frames against Arkansas-Pine Bluff and 7.2 scoreless against the Bulldogs.
The 7.2 innings pitched on Saturday was a season-long as he struck out five batters and scattered four hits without giving up a walk.
The five strikeouts were his second-most in a game this year, two shy of his season high of seven coming in his first career outing in February (vs. EIU – Feb. 16).
Up Next
Arkansas continues the homestand next Tuesday and Wednesday as it welcomes Northwestern State to Baum-Walker Stadium for a two-game series.
First pitch on Tuesday is set for 6:30 p.m., followed by game two on Wednesday at 3 p.m.
You can hear both games at ESPN Arkansas 95.3 in the River Valley, 96.3 in Hot Springs and 104.3 in Harrison-Mountain Home. Pregame coverage starts 30 minutes before the first pitch.
Both games will be televised online on SEC Network+.
???? Monday Halftime Pod — featuring Harry King
Phil Elson & Tye Richardson hit on not overreacting to the sweep, interview Harry King and more!
Van Horn on starting Ramage Tuesday, ex-assistants at Northwestern
Arkansas coach Dave Van Horn met with the media Monday morning to preview the midweek series with Northwestern, a school where he started and has fond memories of being there.
Hunter Yurachek joins The Morning Rush to discuss Musselman and more!
Arkansas AD Hunter Yurachek joins The Morning Rush to discuss Eric Musselman, the coaching search process, season tickets and more!
Bud Light Morning Rush Podcast: Monday
John & Tommy discuss Hogs sweeping MSU, buyouts, next goal for Arkansas athletics, and best/worst of the weekend!
Recruiting transfers not a negative these days, but way of life
New Arkansas coach Eric Musselman landed his first new face of the spring signing period Saturday when Jeantal Cylla committed to be at Arkansas as a graduate transfer.
If you’re complaining about transfers being a problem, you’re living in the past. Thanks to the NCAA throwing the rule book in the trash a page at a time it’s a way of life now.
The Razorbacks will be the third team Cylla has played for in his collegiate career. That’s not a knock on him, by the way, because he appears to be another solid, well, journeyman that’s becoming a trend.
After graduating from North Carolina-Wilmington, where he averaged 13.7 points and 4.6 rebounds while shooting 42 percent from the field and 31 percent on 3-pointers last year, he now fills a roster spot for Musselman on a team that needed some experience.
It was the problem Mike Anderson pointed to this past season where there were some highs, but too many lows, which ended up costing him his job.
Enter Musselman, who guided Nevada to three straight NCAA appearances and a Sweet 16 using transfers. It was something some Hog fans have noted, questioning if that will work here.
Recruiting high school players is the old way of doing things when coaches got four or five years to develop players and their program. Now they’re lucky if to three years. More likely two years if things aren’t progressing rapidly.
You can thank the NCAA. There once was a time when transferring meant losing a year of eligibility while sitting around just practicing. The smart ones spent it getting ahead of academics. Dumb ones flunked out and were never heard from again. Most were somewhere in the middle, hoping everything worked out because there was no way to move again.
Now, in football, the past two Heisman Trophy winners were transfer quarterbacks. Think about that for a second.
That means two schools didn’t do a whole lot of either evaluation, development or coaching and let two Heisman-winning players get away. You can justify it nine ways to Sunday and back, but that’s the bottom line.
By the way, both of the coaches who let Baker Mayfield and Kyler Murray leave are no longer coaching at Texas A&M and Texas Tech, respectively. Suit yourself, but I don’t believe in coincidence.
Yes, that means in some cases the inmates are running the asylum. Coaches who win — Dabo Sweeney and Nick Saban are the most high profile examples — are the best at coaxing talented players to maximize THEIR potential for the team’s benefit.
Gone are the days when a coach just simply laid down the law and worked players until the malcontents simply quit or everybody fell in line. If they quit that meant they were usually finished or playing at a lower-classification school.
Now you have good players making two or three stops in college.
Recruiting these days is much more than chasing high school kids. Now coaches see who’s in the mysterious NCAA Transfer Portal. If you want proof the NCAA has just completely given up, well, there you have it.
Little Rock attorney Tom Mars apparently figured out the worst you can do going up against the kangaroo court that runs college athletics is get a tie. Representing transfers he’s discovered you’ll usually win against the NCAA … and never have to go to court.
The way eligibility waivers are being handed out these days is drawing us closer to complete free agency in college athletics.
Whether that’s good or bad is somebody else’s argument to have.
It’s the way it is.
Musselman is just recruiting players to make the Hogs better as fast as possible. Just like Chad Morris is doing in football and every other coach in every other sport at the UA.
And in the end, wins are what Razorback fans want.
Whether the players come in as freshmen or fifth-year seniors with one year of eligibility really doesn’t matter. Let’s be honest, if you sign four of the best players in the country every year they are going to be gone to the NBA and you’ve got to do it again.
Exactly what the difference is in recruiting escapes me.
Wins are what matter.
Canaan gets Saturday’s game off to fast start with first pitch
Arkansas super fan Canann Sandy was at Baum-Walker Stadium on Saturday and threw out the first pitch with some flair, then talked to the team and pumped them up before the 10-2 win over Mississippi State.
Noland shuts down Bulldogs as Razorbacks sweep SEC series
FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Freshman right-hander Connor Noland handcuffed second-ranked Mississippi State for 7.2 scoreless innings on Saturday and Arkansas rolled to a 10-2 win before a crowd of 11,087 at Baum-Walker Stadium.
The win gave the Razorbacks a sweep in a series that has seen the winning team do that now for four years in a row.
Arkansas (30-10, 12-6 SEC) moved ahead of Texas A&M for the overall SEC West lead by half a game. The Hogs are now 21-4 at Baum-Walker Stadium this year and have won 21 or more games at home every year since 2006.
Noland, who had not pitched past the fifth inning in 10 previous starts this year, held the Bulldogs to only four hits in his career-long outing and came away with no walks and five strikeouts on 89 pitches.
It was Noland’s second win of the week as he pitched two scoreless frames on Tuesday against Arkansas-Pine Bluff and is now 2-2 on the year.
After a slight struggle in the first inning where he left two aboard, but didn’t let any runs cross, Noland retired 10 of the next 11 batters he faced, allowing just a single by Gunner Halter in the third inning.
He went on to pitch into the eighth inning before Jacob Kostyshock took over with two outs. Noland finished the game with 11 groundball outs and no extra-base hits allowed.
Offensively, seven Razorbacks had at least one hit in Saturday’s game. Casey Martin, Jordan McFarland and Jacob Nesbit each came away with two hits.
Nesbit took home the top hitting line with a 2-for-4 game and four RBIs, three coming off a home run in the sixth, making it 7-0. It was Nesbit’s second home run of the year as two of his three hits in the series came in today’s game.
Nesbit drives in first run, then blasts Hogs to big inning
With just one hit in the series prior to Saturday’s series finale, third baseman Jacob Nesbit came through not only once, but twice. Nesbit drove in the game’s first run in the fifth inning on a single up the middle to score Jordan McFarland.
Then, in the sixth, Arkansas had already sent six men to the plate before Nesbit came up again and blasted a 0-1 pitch into the Hog Pen for three runs and pushing Arkansas’ lead to 7-0.
Nesbit has seven hits in his last 10 games and the four RBIs was a career high.
McFarland steps up with Kjerstad out
With Heston Kjerstad having to serve a one-game suspension due to his ejection on Friday, junior Jordan McFarland got the start at designated hitter and Matt Goodheart moved to right.
McFarland responded well with the spot start, going 2-for-3 with two runs scored and an RBI. His single in the fifth eventually led to him being driven in by Nesbit for Arkansas’ first run.
Today was McFarland’s first start in conference play this season and first on the weekend since March 13. It was also his first multi-hit game since Feb. 16 against Eastern Illinois.
Hog pitching shuts down SEC’s top offense
Mississippi State came into the weekend series with Arkansas as SEC’s top hitting team with a .327 average, which was also the second-highest average in the country.
Arkansas pitching, however, kept the Bulldogs in check all weekend, limiting them to just 10 runs on 17 hits and a .173 team batting average. MSU’s leading hitter Jake Mangum was held to only two hits in the series.
All three of Arkansas’ starting pitchers held the Bulldogs to two runs or less and struck out five or more.
Razorback quotables
“Just a great job by our team, obviously, all three days coming out and really playing solid baseball and putting together some really good innings, offensively. Today, the story was Connor Noland. I mean, he was just lights outs. He had his two-seamer going, sinking. He wasn’t overpowering, 90 miles an hour. Most of his pitches were right at 90 and then he had a really good slider. He mixed in some changeups to some lefties. But he kind of went with the harder breaking pitch today and just did a super job.” — Coach Dave Van Horn on Connor Noland’s outing
“Great job all weekend. I’m just proud of these guys. It’s been a good week. We had that tough game last Saturday at Vandy after a tough 3-2 loss on Friday and then we fought back and won Sunday. You can see how it kind of turns things. We did Tuesday and then won three more games. We’ve won five in a row. Just a really good job by our team mentally to stay strong last weekend and it led to this great week we had.” — Van Horn on his team’s sweep of Mississippi State
“I’ve said all along that he’s mature for being a freshman in college. His mental makeup is advanced over some kids his age — maybe a lot — that we coach. It’s one reason why liked him right when he got in here and started working with us. We felt like he’d have a chance to pitch on the weekend, because of the mental part of it. Physically, he’s already there. Now he just needs experience. But you did see the mature part of him come out this whole week leading up today, and he got rewarded for it.” — Van Horn on Connor Noland’s maturity
“I was just looking for a pitch I could handle. He threw me a fastball on the first pitch of the at bat that kind of sawed off my hands little bit. He threw me a fastball again on the next pitch and I didn’t miss it that time.” — Jacob Nesbit on his home run in the sixth inning
Coach (Dave) Van Horn says the SEC is kind of like a league like no other. Rankings don’t matter so much, like we saw last year. We got swept by them in Starkville and we were ranked top five and they weren’t ranked at all. So, anybody can beat anybody on any given day. Thats just kind of baseball in general. Anytime you can sweep anybody in the SEC that’s something you want to do.” — Jordan McFarland on sweeping Mississippi State and now leading the division
“I’ve been waiting for that moment for a long time. Going seven and two-thirds innings, I mean that’s what you dream about, going out there and performing well at your peak performance. That was a big thing and just happy it happened.” — Connor Noland on having a career day on the mound
Up next
Arkansas continues the homestand next Tuesday and Wednesday as it welcomes Northwestern State to Baum-Walker Stadium for a two-game series.
First pitch on Tuesday is set for 6:30 p.m., followed by game two on Wednesday at 3 p.m.
You can listen to the game on ESPN Arkansas 95.3 in the River Valley, 96.3 in Hot Springs and 104.3 in Harrison-Mountain Home.
Both games will be televised online on SEC Network+.
